Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi friends,

I'm new to this forum and excited to learn from you all!

So, my organization hosts a bunch of fundraising events, adoption events, and other cool events. We've been using meetings and Slack to discuss plans and coordinate all the different moving parts. But with so many events happening, not having a huge team, and none of us being event planning pros, we think there's room for improvement!

Do you guys have any favorite event planning software or tips to help keep everything organized between several planners? I'd really appreciate any suggestions you could share.

Thanks in advance for your help, and can't wait to hear your ideas! :) 

#FundraisingandDevelopment

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Wyatt Baggett
Content Marketing Specialist
young-williams.org
Knoxville, TN
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Hi Wyatt,

Our organization isn't very large either but we do have 2 annual recurring events. We basically just keep a spreadsheet that can be updated from year to year. It features the main to do list, contacts and budget. We put it in Drop box or Google docs so it can be shared by the key players. I hope this helps. I like planning events more than attending them. 😉

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Janice MacRossin
Volunteer Coordinator
Helotes Humane Society
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Hey Wyatt,

I don't know what your budget is, but you may want to look into an automation software called Zapier. It links with over 5,000 commonly used programs (like Google's tools, slack, social media sites, project management software (like Monday.com or Trello), email campaign softwares (like Active Campaign or Constant Contact) and many more. It is a great if your team size is small and you have a lot of simple-repetitive tasks that need to be done consistently.

For an example, we use Zapier when hiring people to email the new employee upon being hired, invite them to collaborate on our cloud file storage (Box),  update our admin calendar with their first day, when their 90 day follow up is, when their birthday is, etc, and email 5 different employees specific info about the new hire relevant to onboarding them into our organization. Zapier completes all these tasks nearly instantly every time we hire a new employee. Hope this helps!

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Robert Knox
Director of Programs
Texas Coalition for Animal Protection (TCAP)
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